From the director of Die Hard 2 and the producer of Speed comes 12 Rounds, an adrenalin-fuelled rollercoaster ride that cements John Cena’s credentials as the next action superstar. As New Orleans Police Detective Danny Fisher, Cena must battle through a series of explosive set pieces set by Aiden Gillen’s ruthless criminal Miles Jackson, seeking revenge after his girlfriend is accidentally killed during a multi-million dollar heist. Now, Cena must somehow complete a near-impossible series of puzzles and tasks if he’s to save the life of his fiancée.
To celebrate Cena’s initiation into the pantheon of action movie heroes, we look at 10 of the greatest stars handing over their crown …
1. Arnold Schwarzenegger
With a then almost unpronounceable surname and thick Austrian accent, the Austrian Oak’s meteoric rise from bodybuilder to one of Hollywood’s biggest stars is perhaps the most remarkable career path of all time. After a less than auspicious debut in Hercules in New York in 1970 (credited as Arnold Strong, his voice dubbed), Arnold went on to define 80s action cinema as the no-nonsense action hero in classics such as Commando, Predator and Red Heat. And like Connery’s James Bond, he was always on hand with a quip to lighten things up (who else could get away with “Let off some steam” after impaling a bad guy with a steam pipe?). Governor of California he may be now, but it was his iconic turn as the Terminator that set a benchmark for action movies.
2. Sylvester Stallone
Where there’s Arnie, there’s Sly. But if Arnold was the action hero with a knowing wink, Stallone was the antithesis – hard, cold and brutal. His John Rambo was a man of few words, who over the course of 4 movies (1982’s First Blood to 2008’s Rambo) turned from sympathetic war hero to unstoppable killing machine, a neat reversal of Arnie’s evolution of the Terminator from villain to hero. Coupled with his Italian Stallion Rocky Balboa, Stallone created 2 of the most enduring action icons of the 80s that have survived over 2 decades, and possibly more. Following 2008’s successful Rambo, Stallone has hinted his alter-ego could return for one final mission.
3. Bruce Willis
Viewers of the TV show Moonlighting in 1985 might never have guessed it, but 3 years after playing the fast-talking, comedy foil to Cybill Shephard, Bruce Willis was one of the highest paid action stars of the 80s. The movie was Die Hard, and a franchise was born, with Bruce the wise-cracking yet indestructible New York cop John McClane. He’s since saved the world three times over (Armageddon, The Fifth Element, 12 Monkeys) and even teamed up with fellow action alumni Arnie and Sly to launch the ultimate testosterone eatery Planet Hollywood in 1991.
4. Jean Claude Van Damme
Born Jean-Claude Camille Francois Van Varenberg, the Muscles from Brussels wisely chose a stage name that could be effectively riffed on when playing identical twins (“Double the Van Damme. Double the Van Dammage” ran the tag line for 1991’s Double Impact). With a CV of over 30 action films, Van Damme has played everything from video game character (1994’s Streetfighter), to time travelling cop (1994’s aptly titled Timecop) to John Woo action puppet (1993’s Hard Target). And he could even have faced off against Arnie – he was originally cast as the predator in 1987’s Predator, only to be replaced mid-way through filming.
5. Chuck Norris
A karate champion with a franchise of some 32 karate schools by the age of 34, Norris was urged to go into acting by one of his students – a certain Steve McQueen. There followed his iconic, and rare, turn as a bad guy opposite Bruce Lee in 1972’s The Way of The Dragon, before an almost endless run of 80s classics that saw Norris single-handedly defeat legions of bad guys – Delta Force, Lone Wolf McQuade, Missing in Action. For those in any doubt of his action credentials, check out www.chucknorrisfacts.com, a spoof website that lays claim to the most outrageous feats of Norris: “There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck has allowed to live.”
6. Vin Diesel
A nightclub bouncer for 9 years, Diesel (born Mark Vincent) was plucked from relative obscurity in 1998 by Steven Spielberg on the back of his performance in his self-produced short film Multi-Facial. A part in Saving Private Ryan followed, and soon after Diesel would confirm his action credentials in the space of just 3 years and 3 hit movies – Pitch Black, The Fast and the Furious, and XXX. All spawned franchises, and if Diesel’s choice of the ultimately disappointing Pitch Black follow-up The Chronicles of Riddick wasn’t the most inspired, he’s back on track in 2009 – the 4th in the franchise Fast and Furious sees him at the wheel once more.
7. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
Rising the ranks of professional wrestling like John Cena, Dwayne Johnson set a record for receiving the highest salary for his first starring role – a $5.5m pay day for 2002’s The Scorpion King, a spin-off of from his brief appearance in The Mummy Returns. With a nice line in self-deprecating humour like Arnold Schwarzenegger before him, Johnson’s a natural successor to the Austrian Oak. And even seems to have his blessing – catch the opening minutes of 2003’s Welcome to the Jungle for a nice cameo from the Governator himself.
8. Steven Seagal
The man with the best ponytail in the business, no one does crunching, hand-to-hand combat like Seagal. The first foreigner ever to own and operate an Aikido dojo in Japan (and a man who broke Sean Connery’s wrist while teaching him martial arts during the filming of Bond movie Never Say Never Again in 1983), Seagal broke onto the action scene with a string of classic good-cop-versus-the-world movies (Nico, Hard to Kill, Marked for Death). But it was his role as Navy Seal-turned-chef Casey Ryback in Under Siege that marked Seagal out as a true action star.
9. Jason Statham
The sole British entry in our top ten, Statham’s elevation up the action hero ranks are all the more surprising given his formative early years – British Olympic Diver in his late teens, fashion model in his early twenties, before breaking into movies via Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels in 1998. But with The Transporter in 2002, Statham breathed new life into the action genre, mixing the athletic brutality of Bruce Lee with a roguish, bulldog charm. Famous for doing most of his own stunts, Statham deserves credit for making people with receding hairlines look cool again.
10. Patrick Swayze
Not content with breaking female hearts the world over in 1987’s Dirty Dancing, Swayze went on to break pretty much everything else 2 years later in Road House; as Dalton, the best nightclub bouncer in the business, Swayze gets to philosophise that “no one ever wins a fight”, before entirely disproving that theory by beating everyone to a bloody pulp. A far cry from Swayze’s early years leaning ballet in New York and playing Danny Zuko in Grease on Broadway!
